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An Outstanding Volunteer

Bell Multicultural Student From Vietnam Receives $3,500 in Prizes

Lien Bui's trip from Vietnam to the District three years ago was more than just a journey over the Pacific Ocean.

Bui, now 21 and a senior at Bell Multicultural Senior High School, has traveled the vast distance from a life of deprivation and persecution in her native country to one of personal achievement in the District.

In the last four months, Bui has won two prizes -- one local, one national -- totaling $3,500 in the national Prudential Spirit of Community Awards program, which honors outstanding youth volunteers across the country.

In partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Prudential launched the program in the fall to recognize students' community service efforts. Bui was honored in February with a $1,000 reward as a District finalist along with Tiffani Fonseca, a ninth-grader at Jefferson Junior High School.

Last week, Tiffani, 14, who was recognized for her work with the Washington Boys and Girls Club, joined Bui and 102 other students -- one middle school and one high school student from each of the 50 states, the District and Puerto Rico for a four-day conference in the District.

Bui, who says she helps others because she knows how it feels to need help, went on to become one of 10 local winners who were recognized at the end of the conference with an additional grant of $2,500. She said she will save part of the money for her tuition at Trinity College and send part to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, where her widowed grandmother lives alone.

Since she moved to the United States, Bui has been a member of the Asian-American Youth Leadership Program, worked with the Multicultural Gang Prevention Program and helped pregnant Vietnamese women seek social and medical services.

She also has served as a mediator in halls at school, intervening and trying to negotiate truces among fighting classmates. "I sit down and listen to them," she said. "I say: `I can help you. It will be easy for you and me to sit down.' We write out an agreement."

She also was recognized for her tutoring efforts through her school's Comprehensive Math and Science Program, where she helped improve her classmates' test scores.

"The more I stayed with them, the more they saw I could help them," Bui said of her tutoring experience. "And the more I could improve my English."

Her story begins in Ho Chi Minh City, where her father was imprisoned by the Communists for having served in the South Vietnamese army. Homeless, she lived behind a funeral home with her mother, older sister and two older brothers.

Bui and her siblings had only minimal education through the years because there was no public education system. Several times, she said, they were put into jail.

Her mother, Hien Bui, who is a parent coordinator and a teacher's aide at Bell, struggled to keep her family alive and together.

"I had to be strong so much in my country because we were homeless," Hien Bui said. "I don't know how to prepare for myself, but I prepare for them."

The family waited for a husband and father who returned to them tired, sad and withdrawn. Lien Bui said that they made several unsuccessful attempts to leave the country by boat but that they were turned back because they lacked the necessary papers. Finally, the Humanity Operation Program sponsored Bui and her family in the summer of 1993 to come to the United States -- Freedom Land, the family called it.

"I didn't know much of anything," Bui said, recalling her arrival. "From now on, if anybody needs help, I am willing to help them. Being a volunteer is very useful to me because I can spend my time in a useful situation. There have already been a lot of obstacles in my life."

Still, Bui said, she was surprised to get the award money. "I never have been happy like today," she said after hearing of her final award. "When I go to college, I will participate in as many activities as I can. " Bui is taking advanced courses in English and calculus and plans to major in international business. "I would like to work with Vietnamese and American people. I would like to be a link between those two countries," she said.

Sitting in her mother's small office equipped with a few plush couches and chairs for visiting students, Bui observes that the room is about the same size as the jail cell her family once shared with more than 40 people in Vietnam.

She often comes by after classes to chat with her mother and discuss the day's events in their native language. Bui sometimes brings her string instrument, a dan tranh, which she practices at school. She knows a song of her country -- "Long Me" ("The Mother's Heart") -- which she delicately strums.

"Every day, I talk to her about my studies," she said. "I ask her about her ideas and her opinions about my essays. She can give me a lot of experiences she's been through.

"She tries her best to help me out whenever I give up. And now, I've done a good job, and she's very proud of me."

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